Quotes about theme
page 4

“Khamenei is not the first ruler of Iran with whom poets have run into trouble. For some 12 centuries poetry has been the Iranian people’s principal medium of expression. Iran may be the only country where not a single home is found without at least one book of poems. Initially, Persian poets had a hard time to define their place in society. The newly converted Islamic rulers suspected the poets of trying to revive the Zoroastrian faith to undermine the new religion. Clerics saw poets as people who wished to keep the Persian language alive and thus sabotage the ascent of Arabic as the new lingua franca. Without the early Persian poets, Iranians might have ended up like so many other nations in the Middle East who lost their native languages and became Arabic speakers. Early on, Persian poets developed a strategy to check the ardor of the rulers and the mullahs. They started every qasida with praise to God and Prophet followed by panegyric for the ruler of the day. Once those “obligations” were out of the way they would move on to the real themes of the poems they wished to compose. Everyone knew that there was some trick involved but everyone accepted the result because it was good. Despite that modus vivendi some poets did end up in prison or in exile while many others spent their lives in hardship if not poverty. However, poets were never put to the sword. The Khomeinist regime is the first in Iran’s history to have executed so many poets. Implicitly or explicitly, some rulers made it clear what the poet couldn’t write. But none ever dreamt of telling the poet what he should write. Khamenei is the first to try to dictate to poets, accusing them of “crime” and” betrayal” if they ignored his injunctions.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

When the Ayatollah Dictates Poetry http://www.aawsat.net/2015/07/article55344336/when-the-ayatollah-dictates-poetry, Ashraq Al-Awsat (Jul 11, 2015).

God, People, Books, Faith

“But I am unable to reach the lofty theme; — yet I do not think that the smallest fish that swims in the boundless ocean ever complains of the immeasurable vastness of the deep. So it is with me, I can plunge with my puny capacity, into a subject, the immensity of which I shall never be able fully to comprehend.”

Rowland Hill (preacher) (1744–1833) British preacher

P. 269.

Thinking, Fish

“Chance as a theme and as method. A method of allowing something objective to come into being; a theme for creating a simile (picture) of our survival strategy:
(1) The living method, which not only processes conditions, qualities and events as they chance to happen, but exists solely as that non-static 'process', and in no other way.
(2) Ideological: denial of the planning, the opinion and the world-view whereby social projects, and subsequently 'big pictures', are created. So what I have often seen as a deficiency on my part – the fact that I've never been in a position to 'form a picture' of something – is not incapacity at all but an instinctive effort to get at a more modern truth: one that we are already living out in our lives”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

life is not what is said but the saying of it, not the picture but the picturing Quotes from Notes, 1989; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Techniques' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/techniques-5 1980's

Life, Truth, World, Way

“Low cost relative to competitors becomes the theme running through the entire strategy, though quality, service and other areas cannot be ignored.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Source: Competitive strategy, 1980, p. 35

“I am not unmindful of the journalist's quip that yesterday's paper wraps today's garbage. I am also not unmindful of the outrages visited upon our forests to publish redundant and incoherent collections of essays; for, like Dr. Seuss' Lorax, I like to think that I speak for the trees. Beyond vanity, my only excuses for a collection of these essays lie in the observation that many people like (and as many people despise) them, and that they seem to cohere about a common theme—Darwin's evolutionary perspective as an antidote to our cosmic arrogance.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Ever Since Darwin

Prologue, p. 14
Ever Since Darwin (1977)

People, Lie, Thinking, Tree

“Of this story I can say that it came to me in an irresistible form, crying to be written. It will be accused perhaps of being a mere piece of sentimentality, but, as I saw it, it was a great deal more. If, therefore, it lacks the ring of sincerity, or even, of tragedy, the fault rests not with the theme but with my handling of it.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

On "The Lees of Happiness"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Cry, Sincerity

“While early American society was an agrarian society, it was fast becoming more commercial, and commercial goals made their way among its agricultural classes almost as rapidly as elsewhere. The more commercial society became, however, the more reason it found to cling in imagination to the noncommercial agrarian values. The more farming as a self-sufficient way of life was abandoned for farming as a business, the more merit men found in what was being left behind. And the more rapidly the farmers' sons moved into the towns, the more nostalgic the whole culture became about its rural past. The American mind was raised upon a sentimental attachment to rural living and upon a series of notions about rural people and rural life that I have chosen to designate as the agrarian myth. The agrarian myth represents a kind of homage that Americans have paid to the fancied innocence of their origins.
Like any complex of ideas, the agrarian myth cannot be defined in a phrase, but its component themes form a clear pattern. Its hero was the yeoman farmer, its central conception the notion that he is the ideal man and the ideal citizen.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: The Age of Reform: from Bryan to F.D.R. (1955), Chapter I, part I, p. 23

Life, Men, People, Way

“If every pure character in the Old Testament announces the Messiah, if every unworthy person is his torturer and every woman his Mother, does not the Book of Books lose all life with this obsessive theme?”

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) French philosopher

On the doctrine of prefiguration.
Persons or Figures (1950)

Life, Books, Personality

“Jesus! How does the very word overflow with sweetness, and light, and love, and life; filling the air with odors, like precious ointment poured forth; irradiating the mind with a glory of truths on which no fear can live, soothing the wounds of the heart with a balm that turns the sharpest anguish into delicious peace, shedding through the soul a cordial of immortal strength. Jesus! the answer to all our. doubts, the spring of all our courage, the earnest of all our hopes, the charm omnipotent against all our foes, the remedy for all weakness, the supply of all our wants, the fullness of all our desires. Jesus! at the mention of whose name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Jesus! our power; Jesus! our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption — Jesus! our elder brother, our blessed Lord and Redeemer. Thy name is the most transporting theme of the church, as they sing going up from the valley of tears, to their home on the mount of God; Thy name shall ever be the richest chord in the harmony of heaven, while the angels and the redeemed unite their exulting, adoring songs around the throne of God.”

George Washington Bethune (1805–1862) American hymnwriter

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 54.

Love, Life, God, Truth

“Thus the theme of Personal Idealism — of an eternal world of many rational beings, all self-active, all arbiters of their own destiny and so alike morally responsible, yet, in the vast round of their combinative being, all harmonised by their coexistence with God and their native attracting apprehension of God's nature — grows from one to another of the ascending evidences for it, as the book advances from the first essay to the last.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix A: The Essays in their Systematic Connexion, p.387-8

God, Books, World, Nature

“On the religious themes of The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here.”

Jerry Cantrell (1966) American musician and songwriter

http://loudwire.com/alice-in-chains-reveal-release-date-album-art-track-listing-for-the-devil-put-dinosaurs-here/, Interview with Revolver Magazine, March 2013

“The underlying theme of Western poetry is mortality. The theme of carpe diem asks us to seize the day because we have only a limited number of them. To see life through the lens of death is to approach the condition of gratitude for the gift (or simply the fact) of our existence. And as Wallace Stevens said, Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.”

Billy Collins (1941) American poet

Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry

Life, Death, Beauty, Flowers

“The ones that weren't paintable were the ones I did paint. The dead. To start with, I wanted more to paint the whole business, the world as it then was, the living reality – I was thinking in terms of something big and comprehensive. But then it all evolved quite differently, in the direction of death. And that's really not all that unpaintable. Far from it, in fact. Death and suffering have always been an artistic theme. Basically, it's the theme. We've eventually managed to wean ourselves away from it, with our nice, tidy lifestyle... They [ Red Army Faction-members were not the victims of any specific ideology of the left or of the right, but of the ideological posture as such. This has to do with the everlasting human dilemma in general: to work for a revolution and fail..”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from a conversation with Jan Thorn-Prikker concerning the '18 October 1977 cycle' [R.A.F.], 1989; as cited on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Baader-meinhof' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/october-18-1977baader-meinhof-11 1980's

Death, World, Business, Thinking

“Guru: Today I will discourse upon the violence in astronomy.
Disciple: Revered Sir! Will you be describing the violent phenomenon in the Universe?
Guru: Yes, and I will also dwell upon the controversies amongst the astronomers about what these events imply – controversies which are no less violent than the phenomena themselves

The one aspect of the star-studded night sky which impresses the casual observer most is its tranquility. The peace and quiet of the heavens with the marked contrast to the hurly burly of life on the earth have inspired poets, philosophers, and religious thinkers from time immemorial. Even the amateur astronomer viewing the night sky from his proverbial roof top telescope sees a picture which changes very slowly from night to night. The occasional visit of comet, the fall of a meteorite, or in these modern times the passing of a man made satellite are examples of events which introduce transitory variation on an apparently steady cosmic theme.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Source: Jayant V. Narlikar Violent Phenomena in the Universe http://books.google.com/books?id=VFbCAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover, Courier Dover Publications, 16 October 2012, p. 1

Life, Peace, Star, Universe

“In the content of his work it is interesting to notice that he is profoundly English. His romanticism, and his choice of the theme of Time and Age – both these look back to the Anglo-Saxons and forward to the nineteenth century. Yet his form is French. The heart is insular and romantic, the head cool and continental: it is a good combination.”

John Gower (1330–1408) English writer

C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (1975 [1936]), p. 222.
Criticism

Age, Time, Heart

“I think these are some of the common themes [of my work]: a) life is hard, brutal, capricious and unfair, b) sometimes there is a benefit to seeing it clearly, and acknowledging it truthfully…, and c) other times it is best to find something to laugh about, lest despair crush one completely. I find a lot of humor in shocking or so-called taboo things: castration, excrement, violence (usually self-inflicted or inflicted on the narrator, "[Martin] Scorsese" being an exception), sex and sexual perversions… etc.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

Interview by Mark Prindle, 2003 ( link http://www.markprindle.com/hall-i.htm) Quotes from interviews

Life, Sex, Thinking, Time

“[Labour will deal with racketeering in the price of land. ] I call that a socialist theme. Yes, and I should have thought a Liberal theme. That great modernizing party on this theme at least at Scarborough last week carried through an exercise in recidivism which places its present leadership some years behind the Liberals some 60 years ago. In 1909 and 1910 they filled the land with song—'God gave the land to the people'. Now in 1965 we have the first fruits of Liberal revisionism. While they would not intend to throw doubt on the Almighty's intention in this respect, their researches suggest he did not intend this declaration to be taken too literally.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1965), quoted in The Times (29 September 1965), p. 5.

God, People, Exercises

“Correctly anticipating the rapid growth of living standards, moreover, Keynes predicted that within a century people's material wants would be satiated, and so per capita consumption would stop growing. People would work less, but only because their need for income, and more important their desire for it, was less. And then the challenge to society would be the management of unprecedented voluntary leisure. This was a popular 1930s theme--think of Huxley's Brave New World--but it underestimated the ability of business to create new wants, and new goods and services to fulfill them.”

Richard A. Posner (1939) United States federal judge

How I Became a Keynesian (2009)

People, World, Business, Thinking

“… the mighty Knight who set sail in the most western part of Europe and there in the Orient (where the infant Sun gives its first light) set the standard of the Holy Escutcheons. He punished the evil tyrant and won the city of the Golden Kingdom of Malaya through his strength and skill, and with pious example transformed the profane mosque into a sacred temple. …The time is coming, King Afonso VI, when holy Zion will have its freedom through you. And the Monarchy, consecrated by Heaven for eternity, that well-born plant which flowering will give fruit to Christendom, the theme of a thousand swans, singing about you as they immortalize themselves with you. Titus avenged the unjust death of Christ by the total destruction of Jerusalem; and God has chosen you to whom he gave an unconquerable heart to be the Avenger of His Faith. Take up the staff, then, when Heaven bids you march against the false worship of the Muslims, a worthy enterprise for your courage.”

Francisco de Sá de Meneses (1600–1664) Portuguese poet

. . . . . . o grande Cavaleiro, Que ao vento velas deu na ocídua parte, E lá, onde infante o Sol dá luz primeiro, Fixou das Quinas santas o Estandarte. E com afronta do infernal guerreiro, (Mercê do Céu) ganhou por força, e arte O áureo Reino, e trocou com pio exemplo A profana mesquita em sacro templo. * * * * O tempo chega, Afonso, em que a santa Sião terá por vós a liberdade, A Monarquia, que hoje o Céu levanta, Devoto consagrando à eternidade. Ó bem nascida generosa planta, Que em flor fruto há-de dar à Cristandade, E matéria a mil cisnes, que, cantando De vós, se irão convosco eternizando.De Cristo a injusta morte vingou Tito Na de Jerusalém total ruína: E a vós, a quem Deus deu um peito invito, Ser vingador de sua Fé destina. Extinguir do Agareno o falso rito É de vosso valor a empresa dina: Tomai pois o bastão da empresa grande Para o tempo que o Céu marchar vos mande. Malaca Conquistada pelo grande Afonso de Albuquerque (1634) — quoted in The Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, Vol. III (London, 1880) https://archive.org/stream/no62works01hakluoft#page/n13/mode/2up, and translated by Edgar C. Knowlton Jr. http://www.sabrizain.org/malaya/library/conquestofmalacca.pdf

Death, God, Faith, Flowers

“If there was some central theme beneath the (more Irish than Greek) stew of intuitions about the nature of human existence – and of fiction – it is perhaps in the alternative title, whose rejection I still sometimes regret: The Godgame. I did intend Conchis to exhibit a series of masks representing human notions of God, from the supernatural to the jargon-ridden scientific, that is, a series of human illusions about something that does not exist in fact, absolute knowledge and absolute power. The destruction of such illusions seems to me still an eminently humanist aim; and I wish there were some super-Conchis who could put the Arabs and the Israelis, or the Ulster Catholics and Protestants, through the same heuristic mill as Nicholas.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Introduction (1977 edition)
The Magus (1965)

God, Nature, Knowledge

“It is essential that a pianist meticulously observe the composer’s indications regarding tempo, dynamics, and articulation. These are all crucial in creating full characterizations of individual themes and passages. Far too often one hears unidiomatic performances of Prokofiev’s music in which speed and loudness seem to be the only parameters that matter to the pianist.”

Boris Berman (1948) Russian/American musician

Prokofiev’s piano sonatas : a guide for the listener and the performer (2008), Conclusion

Music, Speed

“The theme is what is being talked about, the point of departure for the clause as message”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Source: 1970s and later, Cohesion in English (English Language), 1976, p. 212.
Context: The theme is what is being talked about, the point of departure for the clause as message, and the speaker has within certain limits the option of selecting any element in the clause as thematic.

Departure

“Each of the most basic physical laws that we know corresponds to some invariance, which in turn is equivalent to a collection of changes which form a symmetry group. …whilst leaving some underlying theme unchanged. …for example, the conservation of energy is equivalent to the invariance of the laws of motion with respect to translations backwards or forwards in time… the conservation of linear momentum is equivalent to the invariance of the laws of motion with respect to the position of your laboratory in space, and the conservation of angular momentum to an invariance with respect to directional orientation… discovery of conservation laws indicated that Nature possessed built-in sustaining principles which prevented the world from just ceasing to be. There were fewer roles for the Deity to play…”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

New Theories of Everything (2007)

World, Law, Nature, Change

“This is the news theme, but it sounds like pure Hollywood entertainment. It sounds like E. T. on a horse being chased by Darth Vader, which is something I'd love to see.”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

Love, Horse

“Small minds can never handle great themes.”
Grandes materias ingenia parva non sufferunt.

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

Letter 60
Letters

“How striking and grand is the spectacle presented by the period with which I purpose to deal, will be most clearly apparent if we set beside and compare with the Roman dominion the most famous empires of the past, those which have formed the chief theme of historians. Those worthy of being thus set beside it and compared are these. The Persians for a certain period possessed a great rule and dominion, but so often as they ventured to overstep the boundaries of Asia they imperilled not only the security of this empire, but their own existence. The Lacedaemonians, after having for many years disputed the hegemony of Greece, at length attained it but to hold it uncontested for scarce twelve years. The Macedonian rule in Europe extended but from the Adriatic region to the Danube, which would appear a quite insignificant portion of the continent. Subsequently, by overthrowing the Persian empire they became supreme in Asia also. But though their empire was now regarded as the greatest geographically and politically that had ever existed, they left the larger part of the inhabited world as yet outside it. For they never even made a single attempt to dispute possession of Sicily, Sardinia, or Libya, and the most warlike nations of Western Europe were, to speak the simple truth, unknown to them. But the Romans have subjected to their rule not portions, but nearly the whole of the world and possess an empire which is not only immeasurably greater than any which preceded it, but need not fear rivalry in the future. In the course of this work it will become more clearly intelligible by what steps this power was acquired, and it will also be seen how many and how great advantages accrue to the student from the systematic treatment of history.”

Polybius book The Histories

The Histories

Truth, World, Fear, History

“It's homemade versus mass-manufactured; bootleg versus theme park; Cujo versus Mickey Mouse.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"King of High & Low" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15129 The New York Review of Books (14 February 2002) Context: I am often wrong. For example, I liked Cop Rock, voted for Nader, and used to think that the preeminent philosophical question of the late twentieth century was whether the government intelligence agency or the semiattached policy-studies think tank represented America's best hope for a viable pluralism. But I may be right, after all, about Stephen King and Walt Disney. No matter how often King shows up on ABC, they haven't yet figured out how to merchandise his dread, how to turn his intuitions and intimations into action figures and fast-food tie-ins and Davy Crockett coonskin caps. It's homemade versus mass-manufactured; bootleg versus theme park; Cujo versus Mickey Mouse.

“Acknowledgement, and celebration, of mystery probably constitutes the most consistent theme of my poetry from its very beginnings.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

A Poets View (1984)
Context: Acknowledgement, and celebration, of mystery probably constitutes the most consistent theme of my poetry from its very beginnings. Because it is a matter of which I am conscious, it is possible, however imprecisely, to call it an intellectual position; but it is one which emphasizes the incapacity of reason alone (much though I delight in elegant logic) to comprehend experience, and considers Imagination the chief of human faculties. It must therefore be by the exercise of that faculty that one moves toward faith, and possibly by its failure that one rejects it as delusion. Poems present their testimony as circumstantial evidences, not as closing argument. Where Wallace Stevens says, "God and the imagination are one," I would say that the imagination, which synergizes intellect, emotion and instinct, is the perceptive organ through which it is possible, though not inevitable, to experience God.

“The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

infinity plus interview (2001)
Context: The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart. Too many contemporary Fantasies take the easy way out by externalizing the struggle, so the heroic protagonists need only smite the evil minions of the dark power to win the day. And you can tell the evil minions, because they're inevitably ugly and they all wear black.
I wanted to stand much of that on its head.
In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

Life, Evil, Heart

“All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

Notes to The Atrocity Exhibition (1970; written 1967 - 1969, annotated 1990)
Context: All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or ancient Egypt, is reassimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonise past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality in attractive and instantly appealing forms.

World

“Fantasy allows you to shine a different kind of light on human beings. I believe the only valid use of fantasy is to illustrate important human themes.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

Interview by John C. Snider (2003) at SciFiDimensions.com http://www.scifidimensions.com/Aug03/terrygoodkind.htm Context: Fantasy allows you to shine a different kind of light on human beings. I believe the only valid use of fantasy is to illustrate important human themes. Magic in my novels is used in three ways: the simplest is as a metaphor for technology. A good example is a magic carpet. There's no magic carpet in my novels, but if someone needs to travel a great distance, they could use a magic carpet, while in a contemporary novel they'd use a car. The second way, and I think the most important, is as a metaphor for individuality and individual ability. The mediocre world doesn't want individuals to rise above what everyone else is doing. The third way I use magic is as a metaphor for coming out of an age of mysticism into a Renaissance. So, in a way it's the struggle between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance. … I never allow my characters to use magic to solve their problems. Some of their peripheral problems are solved through their magical abilities, but it's couched in terms of overcoming those problems in a thinking way. The major conflicts in the books are always solved through human intellect, through thinking out the problem and coming up with a solution. It's never "I'll just wave my magic wand over the bad guys and have them all fall down dead!"

Light

“Conflict… is a theme that has occupied the thinking of man more than any other, save only God and love.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1960s, Fights, games, and debates, (1960), p. 11
Context: Conflict... is a theme that has occupied the thinking of man more than any other, save only God and love. In the vast output of discourse on the subject, conflict has been treated in every conceivable way. It has been treated descriptively, as in history and fiction; it has been treated in an aura of moral approval, as in epos; with implicit resignation, as in tragedy; with moral disapproval, as in pacifistic religions. There is a body of knowledge called military science, presumably concerned with strategies of armed conflict. There are innumerable handbooks, which teach how to play specific games of strategy. Psychoanalysts are investigating the genesis of "fight-like" situations within the individual, and social psychologists are doing the same on the level of groups and social classes.

Love, God, Thinking

“Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity there can be no freedom. Greatness for the enterprise, freedom for the individual — these are the two themes, contrasting but not incompatible, that make up the history of science and the history of religion.”

Freeman Dyson book Infinite in All Directions

Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 1 : In Praise of Diversity
Context: Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features. They share these features also with other enterprises such as art, literature and music. The most salient features of all these enterprises are discipline and diversity. Discipline to submerge the individual fantasy in a greater whole. Diversity to give scope to the infinite variety of human souls and temperaments. Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity there can be no freedom. Greatness for the enterprise, freedom for the individual — these are the two themes, contrasting but not incompatible, that make up the history of science and the history of religion.

Religion, History, Freedom, Science

“When I was a child, I was terrified by this. (plays theme from The Magic Roundabout) It was very sinister, wasn't it? It just went on and on, like Dante's seventh circle of Hell. I recently found out there was a secret middle section deemed unsuitable for small children. There's about four hours of this, then it all starts to go a bit weird.
(plays discordant music)
(Booming echoing voice) I am Zebedee, lord of the woods! Bow down snail, I have dominion!
Ch. 38, 1:24:37”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

Children, Secret, Music, Hell

“The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. It’s matrix—If you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being elliptical in order to come more quickly to my principle theme—is the determination of Being as presence in all sense of this word.”

Jacques Derrida book Writing and Difference

Structure, Sign and Play
Writing and Difference (1978)

History, Sense

“Nor ever shall the Muse's eye
Unraptured greet thy beam:
Theme of primeval prophecy,
Be still the poet's theme!”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Theodric : A Domestic Tale; and Other Poems (1825), To the Rainbow
Context: p>Methinks, thy jubilee to keep,
The first-made anthem rang
On earth deliver'd from the deep,
And the first poet sang.Nor ever shall the Muse's eye
Unraptured greet thy beam:
Theme of primeval prophecy,
Be still the poet's theme!</p

“We like to have a point of view in our stories, not an obvious moral, but a worthwhile theme.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

As quoted in The Gospel According to Disney : Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust (2004) by Mark I. Pinsky, p. 2
Context: We like to have a point of view in our stories, not an obvious moral, but a worthwhile theme. … All we are trying to do is give the public good entertainment. That is all they want.

“These sublime and profound themes admit of no proof whatever… In all questions that cannot be demonstrated, we must adopt the method which we have adopted in this question about God's Omniscience. Note it.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.21
Context: He fully knows His unchangeable essence, and has thus a knowledge of all that results from any of His acts. If we were to try to understand in what manner this is done, it would be the same as if we tried to be the same as God, and to make our knowledge identical with His knowledge. Those who seek the truth, and admit what is true, must believe that nothing is hidden from God; that everything is revealed to His knowledge, which is identical with His essence; that this kind of knowledge cannot be comprehended by us; for if we knew its method, we would possess that intellect by which such knowledge could be acquired.... Note this well, for I think that this is an excellent idea, and leads to correct views; no error will be found in it; no dialectical argument; it does not lead to any absurd conclusion, nor to ascribing any defect to God. These sublime and profound themes admit of no proof whatever... In all questions that cannot be demonstrated, we must adopt the method which we have adopted in this question about God's Omniscience. Note it.

God, Question

“Now, in order to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?" which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
Context: Now, in order to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?" which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare that he is fifty percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites. Thus half of all Negroes live in substandard housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When we view the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population.

Question

“The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God"”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

As quoted in Nikos Kazantzakis (1968) by Helen Kazantzakis, p. 507
Context: The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him.

God

“It is a graph of a theme that flings
The dancer kneeling on nothing into the wings”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

"Grace" in The Poems of Richard Wilbur (1963)
Context: Hebetude. It is a graph of a theme that flings
The dancer kneeling on nothing into the wings,
And Nijinsky hadn't the words to make the laws
For learning to loiter in air; he merely said,
"I merely leap and pause."

“The central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”

Gordon W. Allport (1897–1967) American psychologist

Suffering

“That it does not pay to gamble has been the oft repeated theme of the moralist, and has been demonstrated with much brave show of symbols by mathematicians from Lagrange to De Morgan and onwards.”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)

“It’s a 21st-century play…The overarching theme is, how do we find peace in the present? Through love, understanding and learning about our cultural and religious differences.”

Anne García-Romero

On her play Paloma in “Playwright reaches into past for a better future” https://www.abqjournal.com/118454/playwright-reaches-into-past-for-a-better-future.html in the Albuquerque Journal (2012 Jul 15)

Love, Making love, Peace, Understanding

“Frances and Sebastian accept each other right from the get go, and the world the characters live in is one that is willing to change. I think you buy it because it’s wrapped in this fairy tale theme and playing off these Disney Princess movie tropes. It would be a lot harder if I went for a strict historical theme.”

Jen Wang (1984) American comics artist

On how gender identity and other themes are addressed in The Prince and the Dressmaker in “INTERVIEW WITH JEN WANG, AUTHOR AND ARTIST OF THE PRINCE AND THE DRESSMAKER” https://bookriot.com/2018/02/06/prince-and-the-dressmaker/ in BookRiot (2018 Feb 6)

World, Thinking, Change, Princess

“I wrote this book for my teenage self, so it’s all about themes that were important to my young self: questioning your identity and gender, but also your creative aspirations and the person you want to be.”

Jen Wang (1984) American comics artist

On her graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker in “Exclusive Interview & Graphic Novel Excerpt: Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker” https://www.bookish.com/articles/jen-wang-prince-dressmaker/ in Bookish (2018 Feb 8)

Books, Question, Personality, Self-confidence

“I think that if we’ve done our job well and we articulate this individual’s life well, the themes inherent in that translate…It’s about legacy, about how much do we do with the time we’re given? And then there are themes that wrestle with the American character, but only in that Hamilton’s life is a rough-draft version of the arguments we still have as a country.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980) American actor and musician

On his work Hamilton in “Lin-Manuel Miranda on his Broadway smash Hamilton: 'the world freaked out'” https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/25/lin-manuel-miranda-broadway-smash-hamilton-hip-hop-musical-school-of-eminem in The Guardian (2016 Sep 25)

Life, Thinking, Time, Country

“The theme of choice and the power of culture pops up in my stories often. Before Binti, the biggest example of this is in Who Fears Death when Onyesonwu must face the decision of whether or not to go through a ceremony that required cutting off her clitoris. To many readers, the fact that she even has to think about whether or not to do this is shocking. It’s not shocking to me at all, coming from the culture that I come from where the individual is often secondary to the community…”

Nnedi Okorafor (1974) Nigerian-American writer of fantasy and science fiction

On choice being reconciled with culture in her works in “Interview: A Conversation with Nnedi Okorafor” http://weirdfictionreview.com/2017/02/interview-conversation-nnedi-okorafor/ in Weird Fiction Review (2017 Feb 20) Personal life

Death, Fear, Communication, Thinking

“It’s kind of an old-fashioned book…It’s long; it has a lot of characters; it takes a big theme. It isn’t a navel-staring, dysfunctional-family thing that’s so beloved of most American writers. It’s different, but I think people probably miss those books that were written some time ago – the big book that was written with care.”

Annie Proulx (1935) American novelist, short story and non-fiction author

On her novel Barkskin in “Annie Proulx: ‘I’ve had a life. I see how slippery things can be’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/05/annie-proulx-ive-had-a-life-i-see-how-slippery-things-can-be in The Guardian (2016 Jun 5) Personal life and writing career

People, Books, Family, Fashion

“The only excuse for this book is that it is an attempt to penetrate to that deeper meaning underlying the great events in the life of Christ, and to bring into renewed life and interest the weakening aspiration of the Christian. If it can be shown that the story revealed in the Gospels has not only an application to that divine Figure Which dwelt for a time among men, but that it has also a practical significance and meaning for the civilised man today, then there will be some objective gained and some service and help rendered…. A myth is capable of becoming a fact in the experience of an individual, for a myth is a fact which can be proven. Upon the myths we take our stand, but we must seek to re-interpret them in the light of the present. Through self-initiated experiment we can prove their validity; through experience we can establish them as governing forces in our lives; and through their expression we can demonstrate their truth to others. This is the theme of this book, dealing as it does with the facts of the Gospel story, that fivefold sequential myth which teaches us the revelation of divinity in the Person of Jesus Christ, and which remains eternally truth, in the cosmic sense, in the historical sense, and in its practical application to the individual. This myth divides itself into five great episodes: 1. The Birth at Bethlehem. 2. The Baptism in Jordan. 3. The Transfiguration on Mount Carmel. 4. The Crucifixion on Mount Golgotha. 5. The Resurrection and Ascension.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937), Chapter One

Life, Men, Truth, Books

“The Christ within who is our hope of glory is not a matter of theological debate or philosophical speculation. He is not a hobby, a part-time project, a good theme for a book, or a last resort when all human effort fails. He is our life, the most real fact about us. He is the power and wisdom of God dwelling within us.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: 1990s, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging (1994), p. 130

Life, Wisdom, God, Books

“It is clear that the origins of the discourse on multitude are to be found in the subversive interpretation of the thinking of Spinoza. I can never tire of stressing the importance of the Spinozan premise in the treatment of this thematic. And one highly Spinozist theme is that of the body, and particularly that of the potent body.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Reflections on Empire (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2008)
M - R

Thinking

“To sum it up in a word: Marx was close to Hegel in his insistence on rejecting every philosophy of the Origin and of the Subject, whether rationalist, empiricist or transcendental; in his critique of the cogito, of the sensualist-empiricist subject and of the transcendental subject, thus in his critique of the idea of a theory of knowledge. Marx was close to Hegel in his critique of the legal subject and of the social contract, in his critique of the moral subject, in short of every philosophical ideology of the Subject, which whatever the variation involved gave classical bourgeois philosophy the means of guaranteeing its ideas, practices and goals by not simply reproducing but philosophically elaborating the notions of the dominant legal ideology. And if you consider the grouping of these critical themes, you have to admit that Marx was close to Hegel just in respect to those features which Hegel had openly borrowed from Spinoza, because all this can be found in the Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

These deep-rooted affinities are normally passed over in pious silence; they nevertheless constitute, from Epicurus to Spinoza and Hegel, the premises of Marx's materialism. They are hardly ever mentioned, for the simple reason that Marx himself did not mention them, and so the whole of the Marx-Hegel relationship is made to hang on the dialectic, because this Marx did talk about!

Louis Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism (1976), "Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy?"
A - F, Louis Althusser

Idea, Knowledge

“Commended, multi-talented and innovative Rahman for bringing East and West closer through music and for making the world look at Indian film music more seriously. Diversity of his styles and themes was appealing to different sections of the society.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

Rajan Zed in “Hollywood calling Rehman”.

World, Making love, Music

“The hardest theme in science fiction is that of the alien. The simplest solution of all is in fact quite profound—that the real difficulty lies not in understanding what is alien, but in understanding what is self.”

Greg Bear (1951) American writer best known for science fiction

We are all aliens to each other, all different and divided. We are even aliens to ourselves at different stages of our lives. Do any of us remember precisely what it was like to be a baby?
"Introduction to 'Plague of Conscience'", The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2002)

Understanding, Science, Self-confidence

“How capitalism finds its substance and its essence in the living work, in such a way that it comes exclusively from it, can't go without it, lives only drawing at each time its life from that of the worker, life that then becomes his own, this is what expresses in the whole work of Marx the theme of vampire. "Capitalism is dead work which, such as a vampire, animates itself only in sucking the living work and the more it pumps, the more its life is cheerful."”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Marx II. une philosophie de l’économie, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Nrf », 1976, p. 435
Books on Economy and Politics, Marx. A Philosophy of Human Being (1976)
Original: (fr) Comment le capital trouve sa substance et son essence dans le travail vivant, de telle manière qu’il provient exclusivement de lui, ne peut se passer de lui, ne vit que pour autant qu’il puise à chaque instant sa vie dans celle du travailleur, vie qui devient ainsi la sienne, c’est ce qu’exprime à travers toute l’œuvre de Marx le thème du vampire. « Le capital est du travail mort qui, semblable au vampire, ne s’anime qu’en suçant le travail vivant et sa vie est d’autant plus allègre qu’il en pompe davantage ».

Life, Way, Time, Animals

“Many of the novels read in isolation can seem like lumber-rooms of ideas, cluttered and over-complex, as if attempting too much at once. Perhaps the fault lies in market circumstances and the terse Ace format for which Dick wrote. One could also argue that Dick's novels were a quarter the length they ought to have been to contain such complexity and richness. Even so, the marvellous, multi— levelled web of themes and concerns which emerges from this process of condensation gives Dick's work its specific feel, the very thing that makes it unique. Unrevised, eccentric and extravagant — even so, it's not too much to claim that Dick is perhaps the first real genius to have worked in the science-fictional mode since the days of Stapledon, a hybrid of Dickens and Dostoevsky, possessed of the comic delights and tragic depths of both, yet choosing work where his eccentricities were cherished. In any case, like so many SF writers, he learned to love the genre through the magazines long before his literary tastes were formed. He never quite recovered from that first infatuation with the forbidden van Vogtian delights.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Брайан Олдисс, «Кутёж на триллион лет»

Love, Making love, Feeling, Idea

“[The] theme-the "early Germans"-is still far from being repudiated.”

Walter Goffart (1934) American historian

Source: Quotaes, Barbarian Tides (2010), p. 27

“Some have certain common places, and themes, wherein they are good and want variety; which kind of poverty is for the most part tedious, and when it is once perceived, ridiculous.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Discourse

Parting

“The question of phenomenology, which alone confers a proper object to philosophy, is what makes it into an autonomous discipline -- the fundamental discipline of knowledge -- and not just a mere reflexion after the fact on what the other sciences have found. This question is no longer concerned with the phenomena but the mode of their givenness, their phenomenality, not with what appears but with appearing. The invaluable contribution of historical phenomenology is to become aware of this appearing and to analyze it in and of itself. This is its theme. Again, this must not simply be the repetition of the traditional philosophical problem of consciousness or the greek aletheia. For the illusion of common sense, science and past philosophies is to understand the being of the phenomenon always as a first putting at a distance, the arrival of an Outside in which everything becomes visible, a "phenomenon", in the light of this Outside.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 2
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Making love, Understanding, Question, Knowledge

“Of true benevolence, its charms divine,
With other motives to call forth its power,
And its grand triumphs, multiplied beyond
All former bounds, in this its golden age,
Humbly I sing, awed by the holy theme;
A theme exalted, though as yet unsung,
In beauty rich, of inspiration full,
And worthy of a nobler harp than that
From which heroic strains sublimely sound.”

Carlos Wilcox (1794–1827) American poet

Remains of the Rev. Carlos Wilcox: with a memoir of his life (1828), p. 99 https://archive.org/details/remainsofrevcarl00wilc/page/100/mode/2up Poetry

Age, Beauty, Motivation, Singing

“There was no knowledge on my part about his specific actions, but… There was just energy. And that type of sinister, shadow energy cannot be concealed
..
When your primary male figure couldn't care less to show up, that can become a theme in your life where you’re trying to fill this gap with these different men”

Lisa Bonet (1967) American actress

9 March 2018 https://www.net-a-porter.com/en-gb/porter/article-33a55e73f6c7ac7b/cover-stories/cover-stories/lisa-bonet?cm_mmc=Twitter-_-Magazine-_-20180309&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral&siteID=TnL5HPStwNw-I7e_rfvO9ni1Csr6IiWfpw&Skimlinks.com=Skimlinks.com interview regarding Bill Cosby

Life, Men, Knowledge, Parting

“The theme of displacement is very natural for me. It always comes up in my books because I have been a foreigner all my life and I don’t feel I belong anywhere. I’m an immigrant.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

On how her sense of self remains tied to her native country in “Isabel Allende: 'Few couples survive the death of one child, let alone three'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/02/isabel-allende-interview-marriage-breakup-the-japanese-lover in The Guardian (2015 Dec 2)

Life, Books, Feeling, Nature

“These two processes—linguistic philology and genetic phylogeny—are converging upon a common theme: the history of human migrations.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 13 “Pre-History” (p. 185)

History

“I wanna dance, I wanna fly, gotta get my theme on, gotta shine.”

George Floyd (1973–2020) African American man who was a victim of police violence in the United States, killed by Derek Chauvin

Block Party (1996) Source: during song "Chopped" 1m25s in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSUkUpCiX-E&t=1m25s

Dance, Flying

“It is my goal to be more intentional about the choices I make about the themes in my films so this one spoke to me.”

Ego Boyo (1968) Nigerian actress and movie producer

Source: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/entertainment/381261-how-nigeria-police-can-improve-image-through-film-ego-boyo.html Boyo talks about police officers acts.

“"You must tell them that there must be a new union or there will be chaos," he [Shevardnadze] implored me. That evening, when I hosted republic leaders for dinner — a mixed group of presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers — I saw around the table and in the conversation a microcosm of the post-coup Soviet Union’s potential — and its problems. Whatever euphoria that they felt with their post-putsch independence declarations had given way to a marked degree of realism. "Independence sounds nice, but we have to live, and we have to be practical," observed the Prime Minister of Moldova, Valeriu Muravsky. That was the persistent theme that I heard from every one of the republic leaders, with the sole exception of the Georgian Prime Minister, Vissarion Gugushvili, though even he spoke of the need for economic cooperation once Georgian independence was recognized internationally.”

James Baker (1930) Former U.S. Secretary of State

The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace 1989-1992 (1995) by James Addison Baker, p. 531
1990s

Way, Problem

“Lyrically I like to use themes that make the listener use his or her imagination, and to give a little of the lessons I've learned in my own life. The best subjects are always people, who never fail to amaze me by their unpredictability.”

Ronnie James Dio (1942–2010) American singer

Speaking on his plans for the Dio album Master of the Moon, interview https://ronniejamesdiosite.com/NewsInterviews/Interviews/metalmastersJAN04/MMjan04RJD.html, Metal Masters, January 2004

Life, People, Imagination, Learning

“We like to have a point of view in our stories, not an obvious moral, but a worthwhile theme. … All we are trying to do is give the public good entertainment. That is all they want.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

As quoted in The Gospel According to Disney : Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust (2004) by Mark I. Pinsky, p. 2
Year unknown, published in 2004

“Burns's gifts, expressed in conversation, are the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts: from the gracefulest utterances of courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate speech; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight; all was in him.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Passion

Quotes about theme page 4

Quotes about theme
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